Computerworld articles from April 2008

Computerworld archives from April 2008

Earning their keep.(EDITOR'S NOTE)(Editorial)
April 7, 2008... ONE OF the reasons I enjoy covering the IT profession so much is that if you put five IT pros in a room to discuss a particular topic, you're likely to get at least six different opinions about it. So when I raised the issue of substance abuse...

Another threat to the IT profession.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 7, 2008... As long as only a small percentage of businesses follow the path described in the Feb. 19 article "IT Career Paths You Never Dreamed Of," there will be no problem. But if all businesses follow the "no traditional IT career" trend, there will be...

Doubts about how far integration can go.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 7, 2008... It's true that IT people have had to acquire more business skills to do their jobs effectively. I'm not sure, though, to what extent IT people will ever actually integrate or morph into the business itself, as CSC CIO David McCue seems to...

Vermont ski area reports Hannaford-like data theft.(SECURITY)(Okemo Mountain Resort )
April 7, 2008... IN A SECURITY BREACH that sounds similar to the one disclosed by Hannaford Bros. Co. last month, the Okemo Mountain Resort in Vermont said last week that data from more than 46,000 credit and debit card transactions may have been compromised...

Feds ban, then allow, bids by IBM.(GOVERNMENT)(Brief article)
April 7, 2008... IBM disclosed last Monday that it had been temporarily suspended from seeking federal IT contracts because of dual investigations into a bid it submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in March 2006. But the suspension, which...

Open XML passes ISO test on its second try.(SOFTWARE)
April 7, 2008... MICROSOFT Corp.'s effort to speed the adoption of its Office Open XML document format passed a crucial test last week with the ISO international standards body's approval of the specification as a draft standard. The Open XML specs must...

Dell Inc.(Short Takes)(Brief article)
April 7, 2008... Dell Inc. plans to cut costs by S3 billion by reducing operating expenses, including eliminating 8,800 jobs and a PC manufacturing plant in Austin. Dell said it has already decreased its workforce by 3,200 people.

EMI Music.(Short Takes)(Douglas Merrill )(Brief article)
April 7, 2008... EMI Music has hired Google Inc. CIO Douglas Merrill to head its digital business division. The move comes less than a month after the departure of Sheryl Sandberg, who resigned as Google's vice president of online sales and operations to become...

U.S. Department of Homeland Security.(Short Takes)(Brief article)
April 7, 2008... The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has granted South Carolina an extension for complying with the controversial federal Real ID program. The DHS extended the deadline despite the state's refusal to comply with the law's mandates.

Intel Corp.(Short Takes)(Brief article)
April 7, 2008... Intel Corp. unveiled its low-power, newly architected Atom processor line at its developer forum in Shanghai. The chips are aimed at the embedded and mobile Internet device markets.

Treasury wants IT link for monitoring financial firms.(GOVERNMENT)(Brief article)
April 7, 2008... TO ENSURE THAT federal officials are "instantaneously" made aware of problems in financial markets, the U.S. Department of the Treasury wants banks, insurers and financial services firms to provide regulators with real-time data on their...

IBM, Linden plan corporate version of Second Life.(WEB 2.0)(International Business Machines Corp. and Linden Research Inc.)(Brief article)
April 7, 2008... IBM and Linden Research Inc., the creator of Second Life, last week announced a joint effort to extend the virtual world technology to improve collaboration among corporate workers. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The companies said the new...

Between the lines.(News Digest)(Cartoon)
April 7, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

SAP AG.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)(Brief article)
April 7, 2008... SAP AG promoted Leo Apotheker from deputy CEO to co-CEO, positioning him as the likely successor to Henning Kagermann, who has been running the software vendor since 2003.

Microsoft Corp.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)(Brief article)
April 7, 2008... Microsoft Corp. extended the availability of Windows XP Home Edition for low-cost laptops but said it will stop selling other versions on June 30 as planned.

Four years ago.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)(Brief article)
April 7, 2008... Sun Microsystems Inc. and Microsoft, then bitter rivals, settled an antitrust lawsuit and patent disputes and agreed to make their products more interoperable.

IT cuts to cause loss of U.K. jobs.(Global Dispatches)(Brief article)
April 7, 2008... LONDON -- Reductions in technology spending could result in up to 11,000 jobs being cut from the U.K.'s financial services industry over the next three months, according to a forecast released last week by the Confederation of British Industry...

Shell inks three IT, telecom deals.(Global Dispatches)(Royal Dutch Shell PLC)(Brief article)
April 7, 2008... THE HAGUE -- Royal Dutch Shell PLC has awarded five-year outsourcing deals to three global IT and telecommunications companies. The contracts are worth about $4 billion (U.S.) collectively. Shell, which is based here, said that 3,000 of its...

Briefly noted.(Global Dispatches)(Brief article)
April 7, 2008... Dell Inc. is charging U.K. consumers about 8% more than it charges U.S. consumers for a new Inspiron 1525 laptop with a Blu-ray drive. The laptop's price tag is $879 ([pounds sterling]441) in the U.S. but [pounds sterling]475 ($950 U.S.) in the...

IT tries to keep internal users under control: activity-monitoring tools may be able to help stop rogue insiders from compromising data. But they aren't being widely adopted yet.(SECURITY)
April 7, 2008... WHEN it comes to protecting his company's data, Tom Scocca doesn't mind that he might be seen as something of a Big Brother by internal end users. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Scocca, who is a global security consultant at a large company...

IBM follows path of unification on midrange systems: the vendor is merging its System i and p servers into one product line. But users have nothing to fear, it says.(HARDWARE)(International Business Machines Corp.)
April 7, 2008... FIRST THERE was the AS/400, then the iSeries and eventually the System i--different names, but all for the same midrange computer line that IBM has been selling since 1988. Now there's just an operating system--with the unlikely name of...

Turn PCs into antennas.(On the Mark)(Integral Technologies Inc.)(personal computers)(Brief article)
April 7, 2008... THOMAS AISENBRAY thinks the enclosures around your PCs and laptops can do more than contain their digital innards. They can also transmit signals. As the chief technology officer at Bellingham, Wash.-based Integral Technologies Inc., Aisenbray...

Find that Wi-Fi interference.(On the Mark)(Brief article)
April 7, 2008... If your 2.4-GHz Wi-Fi networks have pesky interference problems, take a gander at the new Chanalyzer 3.0 software from MetaGeek LLC in Nampa, Idaho. The new version of the Windows software, paired with the company's Wi-Spy 2.4x USB-based...

Cheap talk goes global.(On the Mark)(Brief article)
April 7, 2008... Voice communication keeps getting cheaper, thanks to voice-over-IP technology. How does 2 cents per minute sound for international dialing? Almost makes it worth traveling overseas to make friends just so you can call them later. That...

Jonathan L. Zittrain: the Internet champion talks about 'generativity' vs. lockdown, nefarious filtering and social solutions to security issues.(THE GRILL)(Interview)
April 7, 2008... Jonathan L. Zittrain is co-director of StopBadware.org, a "neighborhood watch" campaign aimed at fighting malicious software. He is also a principal investigator of the OpenNet Initiative, a multiuniversity effort to investigate, expose and...

The good-news recession and IT.(OPINION)
April 7, 2008... THE U.S. macroeconomy is slowing down. You and I know this, though economists and politicians are still on the wrong side of the decimal point, debating the exact starting date of the recession. Unwilling to wait for the result of that...

What's in a name? Everything! New IT titles portend a revolution in IT roles.
April 7, 2008... THINK YOU WANT TO BE A CIO OR CTO? Think again. What you might really want to be is a chief delivery officer or chief process officer. Software developers eager to advance should consider looking for product architect roles. Network and...

Presence, context and location.(MOBILE & WIRELESS)(Nokia Corp.)(Brief article)
April 7, 2008... Mobile social networking will expand to include presence, context and location, says Randy Kerr, co-founder of Twango, a media-sharing site with social networking features that Nokia acquired last August and renamed Share. Here's what those...

Social networking gets moving: mobile applications may add new richness for business and personal users.(Nokia Corp.)
April 7, 2008... ACCORDING to most studies, Nokia Corp. sells 40% of all mobile phones worldwide. So it may seem unusual that it's pouring cash into a social networking Web site, but that's what it's doing with Ovi, a site the Finnish mobile equipment vendor...

Deconstructing Google: a self-described 'Google stalker' examines the secrets to its success and explains how you can emulate it.(Q & A)(Interview)
April 7, 2008... Educators used to follow the auto industry because that's where all the lessons came from, says Bala Iyer. Then it was Microsoft. Now it's Google. In this month's Harvard Business Review, Iyer, an associate professor of technology operations...

Building an IT project pipeline: long-range planning helps a Hess Corp. IT unit to partner more effectively with its businesses.(PREMIER 100 CLOSE-UP)
April 7, 2008... WHEN JEFF STEINHORN joined Hess Corp. as CIO of its marketing and refining division in the summer of 2006, he discovered within the first two months of his tenure that the IT organization had historically taken a short-term approach to project...

Confronting the application layer: a security manager can't simply ignore the things she doesn't understand. So it's time to secure Web-enabled apps.(SECURITY MANAGER'S JOURNAL)(Column)
April 7, 2008... AN independent consultant is evaluating our security posture, and he'll be here for the next several weeks. It's the sort of thing that makes me as nervous as a mother whose child is applying to colleges. I used to be a security consultant...

Changing the subject.(OPINION)
April 7, 2008... IF YOU want to really help your organization, one of the more subtle things you need to learn to do is to effectively change the subject. Over the years that I've advised technical managers, young and old, some patterns have become...

Not So different after all.(Career Watch)(Survey)(Brief article)
April 7, 2008... What do Generation Y employees look for in a job? Pretty much the same things older workers look for. Here are Gen Y's rankings of job considerations, on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most important: Salary ...

IT: economy's bright spot.(Career Watch)(Survey)(Brief article)
April 7, 2008... The 8% increase in IT employment last year brought the total number of employed IT workers in the U.S. to 3.76 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The IT unemployment rate fell just a tenth of a percentage point, though, from...

Thomas O. Davenport: the principal from professional services firm Towers Perrin talks about keeping IT workers engaged.(Q & A)(Interview)
April 7, 2008... What are the biggest mistakes that employers make with respect to keeping IT staffers engaged? One of the major shortfalls we see is that employers are placing too much emphasis on programmatic or tangible rewards. Organizations need to...

But you just know he'll find a way.(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(Brief article)(Column)
April 7, 2008... New project manager is hired by this specialty manufacturer, and he soon learns where he stands in the pecking order. Reports an IT support pilot fish on the scene: "In the past two days, he once came down with his wireless mouse in hand,...

It's like April all year long.(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(Brief article)
April 7, 2008... At this government agency's programming office, there's a legal requirement that a PC must lock itself after 15 minutes of inactivity. But what's the most effective way to enforce it? "We have taken to pranking any individual who leaves his...

Seen one, seen 'em all.(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(Brief article)
April 7, 2008... Road warrior complains that his cell phone was stolen at an airport, and now he can't log into his laptop, either. Pilot fish, checking the laptop: "Is this your laptop?" User: Yes, it's my laptop and my computer bag. Fish: "This isn't your...

Not dead yet.(FRANKLY SPEAKING)(Viewpoint essay)
April 7, 2008... IT WASN'T supposed to be this way: Last week, IBM gave the AS/400 a new lease on life. At the Common 2008 user group meeting in Nashville, IBM announced that its venerable minicomputer hardware is being merged with its Unix product line, once...

Pro or parasite?(EDITOR'S NOTE)(Editorial)
April 14, 2008... THERE ARE a lot of CIOs around who dismiss the idea of hiring graduates fresh out of college. I know, because I've spoken with many of them. They clearly have their reasons, and it would be foolish to claim that none of them are legitimate. But...

You never forget your first computer.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 14, 2008... Gary Anthes' comments about the 1401 brought back fond memories ["Tales From the Crypt: Our First Computers," Computerworld.com, March 25]. I started out wiring boards on 407 tab equipment, then moved up to a 1401G (a 4k machine). My first...

Let's recognize how critical training is.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 14, 2008... For some time, I have been consistently facing the issue of there not being enough qualified IT workers available in the market ["Retraining Dilemma," Editor's Note, March 24]. I find the same as I broach the subject with my colleagues. I...

'Touch-screen voting made me feel better'.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 14, 2008... The key thing to me when it comes to touch-screen voting is that asking voters if they trust the machine misses the point ["Voters Trust Touch-Screen Machines, Studies Show," Computerworld.com, March 26]. Do you ask patients whether a medical...

Solid-state drives still not ready for IT, users say.(STORAGE)(Brief article)
April 14, 2008... SOLID-STATE storage technology may offer some performance advantages, but for most companies, it remains too costly and unreliable for data center use, said several attendees here at last week's Storage Networking World conference, which was...

Lottery will select H-1B winners.(IMMIGRATION)(Brief article)
April 14, 2008... The U.S. government last week announced that H-1B visas for fiscal 2009 will be issued via lottery, after employers submitted another overflow batch of petitions earlier this month. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services received 163,000...

IT execs warned to get ready for rapid cutbacks.(MANAGEMENT)
April 14, 2008... THE IT cost-cutting phase of the current economic downturn may arrive like a buzzsaw--with force and immediacy, Gartner Inc. analysts warned data center managers at the research firm's Symposium/ITxpo conference here last week. In fact,...

Oracle Corp.(Short Takes)(Brief article)
April 14, 2008... Oracle Corp. this week plans to release 41 software patches, including fixes for two bugs in its flagship database that can be exploited over a network without a user-name and password. The company will also issue 11 patches for its E-Business...

Symantec Corp.(Short Takes)(Brief article)
April 14, 2008... Symantec Corp. has agreed to purchase App-Stream Inc., a maker of desktop virtualization software, for an undisclosed sum. Symantec has been reselling App-Stream's software with its Software Virtualization Solution Pro product since 2006. The...

IBM.(Short Takes)(Brief article)
April 14, 2008... IBM has agreed to buy FilesX Inc., a Haifa, Israel-based maker of storage software. Terms were not revealed. The FilesX products will become part of IBM's Tivoli line when the deal closes.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc.(Short Takes)(Brief article)
April 14, 2008... Advanced Micro Devices Inc. has started shipping its quad-core Opteron processor, code-named Barcelona, after a delay of several months to fix a bug discovered last fall.

IBM unveils water-cooled supercomputer.(HARDWARE)(International Business Machines Corp.)(Brief article)
April 14, 2008... IBM LAST WEEK unveiled a still-rare water-cooled server as part of an effort to help companies wrestling with a lack of data center power. The Power 575 supercomputer incorporates the company's new Hydro Cluster design, which includes a...

Uninvited guest--Safari--hits corporate networks.(INTERNET)(Apple Inc.)(Brief article)
April 14, 2008... APPLE INC.'S push to offer its Safari Web browser as part of a mid-March iTunes and QuickTime update is forcing some corporate network administrators to work quickly to remove the software from enterprise PCs. Cody Wilson, a network...

Between the lines.(News Digest)(Cartoon)
April 14, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Iomega Corp.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)(EMC Corp.)(Brief article)
April 14, 2008... Iomega Corp. accepted EMC Corp.'s latest buyout offer of $213 million, after spurning previous hostile offers of $178 million and $205 million.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)(Brief article)
April 14, 2008... Advanced Micro Devices Inc. announced plans to lay off 10% of its workforce, or about 1,600 employees, by the third quarter of 2008 in an effort to cut costs and return to profitability.

44 years ago.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)(International Business Machines Corp.)(Brief article)
April 14, 2008... IBM launched its System/360 mainframe line, the first family of computers that could continue running the same software as new models were added.

Asustek sues IBM in patent dispute.(Global Dispatches)(International Business Machines Corp.)(Brief article)
April 14, 2008... TAIPEI -- Motherboard maker Asustek Computer Inc. earlier this month filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court charging that IBM has infringed on two of its patents. The suit was filed four months after the U.S. International Trade Commission...

Microsoft expands health IT efforts.(Global Dispatches)(Brief article)
April 14, 2008... BERLIN -- Microsoft Corp. last week announced at the CohnIT heath care show here that it has started distributing its Amalga health care software in Europe. Microsoft bought the software, which is used to manage data in various health care...

Briefly noted.(Global Dispatches)(Yahoo Inc. to buy Tensa Kft )(Brief article)
April 14, 2008... Yahoo Inc. last week agreed to buy almost all of the assets--including Web analytics tools and an R & D operation--of Tensa Kft in Budapest. Terms of the deal, expected to close by mid-2008, were not disclosed. Linda Rosencrance...

Hackers open new front in card data thefts: cybercrooks are stealing info while it's in transit between systems. Can the PCI rules stop them?(SECURITY)
April 14, 2008... SECURITY managers often describe their efforts to protect corporate data from being compromised as a full-fledged battle of wits against cybercrooks who are continually arming themselves with innovative tools and methods of attack. And the...

IT keeps battling to maintain control of technology: gains are forfeited as business units demand to make purchases on their own.(MANAGEMENT)
April 14, 2008... COUNTRIES MAY have clear borders, but IT organizations do not. IT managers and analysts at Gartner Inc.'s Symposium/ITxpo here last week said that a growing number of IT units are encountering new resistance in the never-ending battle for...

SaaS slips past last barrier.(On the Mark)(Software as a Service)(Brief article)
April 14, 2008... CIOs ARE loath to give up direct control of the systems that chief financial officers watch like a hawk. Billing and general ledger software come to mind as programs you'd think would never be candidates for software as a service (SaaS). But...

Morph SaaS into DaaS.(On the Mark)(Software as a Service and Desktops as a Service)(MokaFive Inc.)(Brief article)
April 14, 2008... "Desktops as a service" may be the next catchy buzzphrase if a new virtualization technology from MokaFive Inc. works as advertised. Bill Demas, CEO of the Redwood City, Calif.-based start-up, says the MokaFive service lets you store your...

A cure for boring IT applications.(On the Mark)(Brief article)
April 14, 2008... One reason enterprise applications fail is that they are, well, boring. And Anthony Franco, president of EffectiveUI Inc. in Denver, says the state-of-the-art tools that help developers write apps that appeal to users aren't just about...

Matthew Glotzbach: Google's enterprise product guru talks about the logic of cloud computing, the emergence of corporate social networking and the advent of true utility computing.(THE GRILL)(Interview)
April 14, 2008... Google's enterprise guy gets it that corporate users need to become more comfortable with "cloud computing"--software services delivered through the Internet--before it will really take off. But he thinks logic is on his side. ...

An XP lite could really go mobile.(OPINION)
April 14, 2008... I'VE BEEN working with one of the coolest ultraportable Windows XP machines I have ever used. It's a shame that most people will never be able to experience it. The reason they won't is that, out of the box, the Eee PC isn't a Windows XP...

Whodunit? Was it the receptionist, the salesman or the building manager who gave away company secrets? Here's how to find and stop the leaks.(SECURITY)
April 14, 2008... TRUSTING AN employee with access to mission-critical or sensitive systems is a risky but unavoidable gamble. Let's face it: People are wild cards. In fact, let's take the gambling analogy a step further. Just as casinos thwart cheaters at every...

How to spot a spy: con artists make it their job to extract sensitive corporate intelligence from unsuspecting employees. Here's how to stop them.(SECURITY)
April 14, 2008... CORPORATIONS are woefully unprepared to counter attempts at corporate espionage, say experts who perform vulnerability assessments designed to uncover security weaknesses. U.S. corporations lose as much as $300 billion a year to hacking,...

Shhh! Privacy, please.(OPINION)
April 14, 2008... LIBR ARIANS WILL go a long way to defend the privacy of their patrons' reading habits. How far will you go to defend the privacy of your customers' information and your employees' personal data? In 2003, the chief librarian of the city of...

Just because they're remote, it doesn't mean they aren't engaged.(Career Watch)(Brief article)
April 14, 2008... Remote and home-based workers consistently were more likely to choose one of the two most positive answers (typically "strongly agree" or "agree") when presented with these statements: SOURCE: KENEXA RESEARCH INSTITUTE'S 2007 WORKTRENDS...

Scott Penberthy: the chief technology officer at Heavy Inc. responds to questions, offering thoughts about trust and the issue of youth vs. experience.(ASK A PREMIER 100 IT LEADER)
April 14, 2008... What are the most important skills for an IT professional to have to advance his career? Be someone people can trust to get a job done--and done well. Trust is something that takes months and years to build, but seconds to destroy. Begin with...

Just one thing.(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(Brief article)
April 14, 2008... Consultant pilot fish gets a panicked call from a client: "Everything was working fine. We went into a meeting, and when we came out, nothing worked. We couldn't access the Internet or the server, or use our VoIP phones." Fish arrives on-site;...

Sure there's a reason: it won't work.(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(Brief article)
April 14, 2008... Trouble ticket comes to this pilot fish at a university computing center: "There is a problem with the code used in changing passwords. The password standard states: 'Password Composition and Complexity: At least one numeric that is not at the...

Aha!(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(Brief article)
April 14, 2008... Support pilot fish investigates a user's problem: She has dual screens and complains that the mouse won't move between them. "User has a laptop with an external monitor," fish reports. "Both screens showed the lovely tulip wallpaper she had...

Security team.(FRANKLY SPEAKING)
April 14, 2008... HOW MANY people do you have working to protect your data, systems and networks? Go ahead, count 'em up. We'll wait. Finished? Here's the bad news: Unless you've just counted every person in your organization--not your IT department, but your...

Here's to humor.(EDITOR'S NOTE)(Editorial)
April 21, 2008... WHEN I wrote last week about the question of whether we have enough young people graduating from technology-related university programs, I did so in a way that was meant to convey the seriousness of the issue. But there's a not-so-serious...

Responses to: Asperger's and IT.(ONLINE CHATTER)
April 21, 2008... April 2, 2008 As a child, I was a nonresponsive autistic. My parents almost divorced because of the pressure to institutionalize me. I just did not communicate or respond to the world. Eventually, I began opening up, through music and...

Response to: vendor disk failure rates: myth or metric?(ONLINE CHATTER)(Brief article)
April 21, 2008... April 4, 2008 "Some say the only reason the measurement hasn't been ditched yet is that there's no good alternative. 'Should we throw out MTBF? Well, what are we going to replace it with?'"--quoting former EMC Corp. employee Steve Smith...

Sun to reserve some MySQL features for paying customers only.(OPEN SOURCE)(Sun Microsystems Inc.)
April 21, 2008... IT WAS an eventful week for Sun Microsystems Inc. at the annual MySQL user conference, the first since Sun acquired open-source database vendor MySQL AB in February. First, Sun said it was pushing back the release of a MySQL 5.1 upgrade...

N.Y. set to tax Amazon Purchases.(LEGISLATION)(New York)(Brief article)
April 21, 2008... The New York State Assembly this month approved a bill that would require certain online retailers, including Amazon.com Inc., to collect state sales taxes. State officials estimate that the new law will generate some $50 million in tax revenue...

Cybercrooks lure CEOs with fake subpoenas.(SECURITY)(chief executive officers)
April 21, 2008... PANOS Anastassiadis didn't click on a link in the fake subpoena that popped into his e-mail in-box last Monday morning. But then, he runs an IT security company. Other high-level executives weren't so savvy. Security researchers...

Oracle Corp.(Short Takes)(SAP AG)(Brief article)
April 21, 2008... Oracle Corp. said that it plans to expand its lawsuit against SAP AG to include charges that workers at SAP's TomorrowNow subsidiary stole Oracle software applications with the knowledge of SAP executives. SAP had previously admitted to...

AT & T Inc.(Short Takes)(Brief article)
April 21, 2008... AT & T Inc. plans to lay off about 4,650 employees, or about 1.5% of its workforce, to streamline its operations. The company said the move will affect mostly management personnel.